It would suit progressives, for instance, if the Pope would
be so good as to repeal thousands of years of Catholic teaching on abortion. No
matter the Pope of the moment, this will happen only when Hell freezes over.
But progressives welcome the present Pope’s views on climate change and capital
punishment, while on the right, such views are anathema. Pope Francis’
antipathy toward raw capitalism cheers such as socialist Bernie Sanders, who is
running for President this year, as well as President Barack Obama who, during
welcoming ceremonies at the White House, extravagantly praised the Pope on his
resemblance to himself. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but,
however flattering, imitation falls far short of self-praise, which is always intensely
sincere.
A master at co-opting moments, Mr. Obama gave it his best
shot. As a community organizer in Chicago early in his political career, Mr.
Obama told the eleven thousand guests gathered on his lawn to hear the Pope, he
had worked with the Catholic Church to bring hope and change to the poor.
“Here in the United States, we cherish our religious
liberty,” Mr. Obama said,
but around the world, at this very moment, children of God, including
Christians, are targeted and even killed because of their faith.”
Perhaps from a sense of delicacy, Mr. Obama did not identify
the chief persecutors of Christians in the world. ISIS, a confederation of
Islamic terrorists, has been particularly oppressive. The beheading of
Christians, the burning of Christian churches, the rape and enslavement of
Christian women never occurred in Chicago when Mr. Obama was evangelizing on
its mean streets.
The Pope acknowledged that “American Catholics are committed
to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive, to safeguarding
the rights of individuals and communities, and to rejecting every form of
unjust discrimination. With countless other people of good will, they are
likewise concerned that efforts to build a just and wisely ordered society
respect their deepest concerns and the right to religious liberty. That freedom
remains one of America’s most precious possessions.”
As if to underscore his remarks concerning religious
liberty, the Pope on Wednesday made what is being called “an unscheduled stop”
to a convent of nuns, The Little Sisters of the Poor, “to show his support for their lawsuit against U.S. President Barack Obama's
healthcare law.” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi characterized the unscheduled
stop as a "brief but symbolic visit."
The U.S. Congress doubtless was pleased to host the Pope and
listen to his message, but the Holy Father did not dine with Congressional
leaders after the presentation, because the keeper of the Pope’s schedule
already had booked him for lunch with the poor in Washington D.C.
Governor Dannel Malloy, who describes himself as “a
non-practicing Catholic,” was stirred by certain portions of the Pope’s
remarks. We should not let Mr. Malloy’s self-characterization pass without
noting that since Catholicism is largely a praxis, there is little difference
between “a non-practicing Catholic” and a non-Catholic. Receiving the Pope with
11,000 others on the south lawn of the White House, Mr. Malloy said, was an
“amazing” and “moving” experience for him.
According to one paper, Mr. Malloy had “embraced the
progressive movement within the Catholic church known as liberation theology.
Believers of the movement felt it wasn’t enough to simply care for the poor,
but felt it was necessary to pursue political changes to eradicate poverty.”
The Pope, Mr. Malloy told the paper, “seems to be inviting
that back.” Not true. This Pope and others – most dramatically, Pope John Paul
II, who was canonized in 2014 – sternly rejected liberation theology, a theological-political movement in the Latin American of the 1970’s that attempted
to combine Catholicism with revolutionary socialism, but then one cannot
expect part-time Catholics to be current with the theological niceties of their
church.
In his address to the U.S. Congress, the Pope cautioned
Catholics against the dangers of religious ideological movements. A
fundamentalist view that sees the world perpetually locked in a struggle of
good and evil is a sort of secular Gnosticism that Christianity had rejected as
long ago as the fourth century – which is not to deny the presence of good and
evil in the world. To those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, these
remarks appear to have been directed at a fundamentalist Islam of the kind
practiced by ISIS in norther Iraq and Syria.
The Pope is much more interested in liberty than in
liberation theology. He holds, along with Catholics throughout the ages, that
true freedom is attained through a love of the good and beautiful, whose
exemplar is the Christ of Holy Scripture. All of us will do well to remember
that Popes are not presidents or congressmen or governors, for which we should
all drop to our knees and thank God. The Pope's kingdom, like that of the Christ he
serves, is in some sense not of this world.
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